This genre-bending duo of Dave Ayodele and William Lion, aka Ayodele & The Lion, harness their shared musical camaraderie to create a new musical path as they present a clear artistic vision with this collection of five strong songs for their first outing, The Color of Memories EP.

Starting off this collection is the spy love-themed, “About Pops”, which features an emotive horn section mastfully arranged over a glitchy acid-jazz sonic scene. Arising out from the sultry dub studders comes a muted trumpet solo that dissipates into the background before echoing away.

Taking a Gospel diversion, “Mourning Gray”, the Hammond swells engulf the chorused electric guitar arpeggios as they bounce off one another in conversation. An accompanying sampled vocal pattern blends into the cascading organ chords as the sun rooftop song shines through.

“Melodius” explores more modern spatial ideas, with it’s smooth drum programming mixing under the uplifting piano gestures. Orbiting a galaxy of sentimental tenderness, this unique arrangement of dynamic vocal and synth lead call and response counterpoint gestures playfully drift the subtle textures off into oblivion.

Moving on into Phily-NeoSoul territory, “Sunset Drive” comes to the table with it’s spiritually stirring Rhodes story taking the lead. This unique musical bed gives way to a sublime Electric Piano solo section that develops into a lush loop on top of the reversing vocal synth swells.

Rounding out this complete collection of refreshing music is the hopeful and promising “Blue Wave No. 5”. Bringing together a fusion of Latin percussion, pan flutes, kalimbas, and island vibes, this uplifting finale takes the lyrical theme developed by the repetitive guitar patterns from the first section and orchestrates into a high brass section for its last recapitulation.

About

An unlikely transatlantic musical partnership, Ayodele & The Lion is the artistic merger of two musicians on a mission to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

A combination of Dave Ayodele—prolific Nigerian bass player, music arranger, producer, and director—and William Lion—Chief Auralnaut and music producer from the Dallas-based The MarsSaturn Sound—this duo have amalgamated their separate virtues of excellence to create a distinctive vision of sound.

Dave Ayodele, Nigerian bass extraordinaire and musical maestro, credited on over 300 recordings, is an internationally known instrumentalist and composer. Working across Film, TV, Advertising, and Podcasts, some of his credits include iconic artists such as Adekunle Gold, Simi, Falana, and Don Moen.

A multi-instrumentalist, Ayodele is constantly blurring the spaces between Jazz, Soul, Gospel, RnB, Fusion, Pop, Afrobeat, Dub, Trap, and Modern Electronica as he tours regularly with various bands and ensembles across Europe, Africa, and The Americas.

William Lion, a product of a musical family and one half of the Jazz-laden musical project, The MarsSaturn Sound, was heavily influenced by the dance music movement of 90s DJ culture. It is the traditional American Soul Music sounds that would remain the most impactful to his musical perspective moving forward.

Lion developed his production style over the course of many projects, before him and Chris Rodriguez formed The MarsSaturn Sound, pushing their Space Indie Soul Dub Psychedelia to new heights, through a rustic refinement.

Meeting via studio session work online, Lion and Ayodele connected on a deeper musical level, surpassing just the vocational needs and scope of instrumental session work. Together these two present their new, fresh and distinct take on electronic soul music.

With this first EP, The Color of Memories EP, Ayodele and Lion have set forth an production project that explores the outermost lines of genre definition, as they push past them bending expectations even further.